Bad things CAN happen to good people

I met the man I affectionately call “Jimbo” when I was 14 years old. He was a friend of my big brother’s and came to our house quite frequently once my brother moved back in at the age of 21. Jimmy was a large man, and at first glance was very intimidating. However, what I came to know through interacting with him was that he was a giant teddy bear with a heart of gold. He literally loved everyone and lit up the room with his smile. He was not afraid to act a fool or do something silly to cheer someone up. He would give you the shirt off of his back, and furthermore, he would carry you on his back if you needed him to; he was just that kind of person. I had the privilege of growing up around Jimmy and I came to see him as another big brother.

In September Jimmy was killed in a motorcycle accident. He had been part of a motorcycle gang called “The Bandidos” for several years and he loved to ride. He had just gotten married only a few months before his tragic death. He left behind a 10 year old daughter as well. It was devastating. My first reaction of course was to ask WHY. WHY GOD? WHY?

You see, people have a need to try to understand why bad things happen. We like predictability and we like to feel like we have control. When something unexpected or bad happens we need to determine a reason or explanation.  Usually people will attribute the event to the person/people involved in the event (personal or internal attribution, or the situation itself (situational or external attribution). This is called Attribution Theory (Heider, 1958).

I’m not going to lie; when I heard that Jimmy died on his motorcycle the first thing I thought was that he was so foolish and reckless to be riding that thing. Everyone knows that if you get into an accident on a motorcycle it is more likely to be fatal (at least I told myself this…probably due to the vividness effect).  I had fallen prey to the Defensive Attribution Bias, which says that in order to feel safe from harm people tend to blame the victim of bad events (Walster, 1966). If the person that the bad event happened to was foolish, ignorant, or bad, then people can distance themselves from the possibility that it could happen to them. After all, they do not possess any of those characteristics.  They are smart, and good.

Next I wanted to blame the situation and the people in his biker gang.  Jimmy was such a good person; surely he wasn’t to blame for his own demise. It must have been someone else’s fault. Those other bikers must have put him in a bad position. Jimmy would never have driven on that winding road in the middle of the night at such high speeds if they hadn’t influenced him.  They must have been irresponsible and selfish people. They couldn’t have cared about Jimmy. Making myself believe these things somehow gave me some relief, but I soon learned how horribly wrong I was.

When I arrived at Jimmy’s funeral I was in no way ready for what I saw when I pulled up to the funeral home. Literally 1000 motorcycles were parked all around the place. The parking lot was completely full, as was a nearby field. Once I parked and walked down to the funeral home I saw thousands of bikers, all in their gear, standing in front of the door. It was actually pretty intimidating at first, but as they saw me walking in they immediately cleared a way through the crowd and escorted me into the room where the service was to be held. They were so kind and I saw them showing many more signs of chivalry and respect as they escorted other family members and friends. Then when several of them got up to speak I could tell that these men genuinely loved Jimmy and cared about him. They were not bad people, and they were not to blame for Jimmy’s death. In fact, no one was. It was a freak accident. The driver of the car was neither drunk nor negligent. Jimmy was not driving irresponsibly, and his friends didn’t force him to ride in unfavorable conditions. Unfortunately, Jimmy was trying to pass the car and was in their blind spot. It happened so fast that no one could have prevented it. That is the cold hard truth, even if it hurts to realize it.

The moral of this story is that we often make errors when trying to explain why things happen or why people behave a certain way. While most of the time it is helpful to look for a reason why tragedies happen, in the end we have to realize that some things in life cannot be predicted, prevented, or explained. In these instances, such as when we lose a loved one, we have to simply cherish the times we had with them and let their spirits live on in our memories.  I will never forget Jimmy, and I will also never forget the large outpouring of love that was shown from an unexpected group of people. In the future I will think twice before making quick attributions and spend more time examining all possible sides of a situation.   

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R.I.P Jimmy Allison 9-02-12

                                                                 References

Heider, F. (1958). The psychology of interpersonal relations. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Walster, E. (1966). Assignment of responsibility for an accident. Journal Of Personality And Social Psychology, 3(1), 73-79. doi:10.1037/h0022733

Make those first impressions count!

 You never get a second chance to make a first impression (Rogers, 2013), or so the saying goes.  The idea that first impressions are important is nothing new. For example, most people understand that the first meeting with someone often sets the tone for future encounters with that person. If we ramble on nervously, say something insensitive, or come off as socially awkward, then the other party will most likely form an opinion of us that is less positive than we would like. It is for this reason that many people become nervous before meeting their significant other’s parents or interviewing for a new job.  Impressions matter…A LOT.  In fact, they matter much more than we even realize, which makes it imperative that we understand how impressions of other people are formed, and how we can influence them.

Solomon Asch (1946) introduced the theory of impression formation, which is the process of integrating information about a person’s appearance, behaviors, and perceived traits into a coherent schema of that person. Even with very small amounts of information retrieved from short periods of time, people are surprisingly good at forming fairly accurate impressions of others.  These impressions will influence how a person interacts with another person, and whether or not they like the other person.

If you watch this video from the movie Hitch, you can easily see that within just seconds people are able to form pretty strong impressions of others.

In the movie clip, it is interesting to notice the different signals that Sara is giving off even without speaking. As Hitch points out, her body language says it all. Nothing else is needed to form a first impression of Sara, which is pretty powerful.

Now, it could be that Sara is falling prey to the role schema (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974), which is an organized framework of knowledge derived from her past experiences that tells her that certain people act in a certain way. Because many men hit on women in bars past experience may influence how Sara reacts to men who come to talk to her, or offer her drinks.You see, impression formation goes both ways. Before the man even says a word to her, she already has an idea of who is he is and what he wants. In this scenario, the man is playing into the role that Sara already has in her head.

So what makes Hitch's first impression on Sara so different? Well, it could be that he contradicts the aforementioned role schema of how men act in bars. Or it could be that Sara reverts to a form of cognitive heuristic, which is a mental shortcut that allowws us to process information quickly (Gilovich et al., 2002; Kahneman et al., 1982), in order to size him up. Because Sara has no previous information or experience with Hitch, she may use a form of heuristic called anchoring and adjustment (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974), which allows her to use another person (the anchor) to compare with Hitch and then make adjustments based on this assessment. To further explain, Sara may have an impression of the first man as being creepy or arrogant, so she compares this impression with the way Hitch is presenting himself. Hitch certainly does not portray the same traits as the other man, so he forms a more positive impression. Because of this discrepancy, Sara may decide that Hitch is not so bad in comparison.

Funny to think that someone's bad impression could actually influence an impression of another person, but it seems that this is the case. From gathering all of this information the one thing we can be sure of is that impressions matter...so make sure you do everything in your power to make a good one, even if that means hanging out with really creepy people. Just kidding ;)

In closing, we now know that first impressions matter, that people use different strategies to make these impressions, and that these impressions are often very accurate. So whatever you do, try your best to make that first impression count!

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References

Asch, S. E. (1946). Forming impressions of personality.

Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 41, 258-290.

Gilovich, T., Griffin, D., & Kahneman, D. (2002). Heuristics and biases: The psychology of intuitive judgment. New York, NY US: Cambridge University Press.

Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1982). On the study of statistical intuitions. Cognition, 11(2), 123-141. doi:10.1016/0010-0277(82)90022-1

Rogers, W. (2013, February 20). Thoughts and quotes. Retrieved from http://thoughts.forbes.com/thoughts/business-will-rogers-you-never-get  

Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1974). Judgment under uncertainty:

Heuristics and biases. Science, 185, 1124–1130.